I do believe this is my first post here, and I've only been driving expedite for 4-5 months now and still consider myself very much a newbie. I'll get strait to the questions though to keep this as short as possible
While browsing these forums, I found an interesting thread labeled Multi-carrier thread under the Carrier forums. This raised and eyebrow and definitely peaked my interest. As it stands, what little I know about Expedite trucking is as such:
Expedite company: Handles the logistics, setting up loads/negotiating rates with the customer, dispatching to drivers, puts their company log on the truck/van, installs qualcomm units (if they utilize this technology) and assigns truck numbers to the owners truck/van.
Owner: Owns the truck, pays for all maintenance and repairs/truck payments, as well as any fees/insurance that will be required, and pays the driver. (unless of course the owner is the driver as well, in which case they pay themselves )
Driver: Sub-contracted by the owner and pays for fuel (I do understand this, not to mention other details, vary depending on the owner) and deals directly with the expedite company for dispatching, negotiations and getting home.
I'm sure I left some stuff out, but that's how I understand it in a nutshell, and so you might see how being a Multi-Carrier driver confuses me. I very much like the idea of a Multi-carrier driver for many reasons; apparently it's only allowed with cargo vans and that means better fuel mileage and less restrictions/no HoS regulation (from my understanding) not having to go into weigh stations (this might vary?) fitting in more parking lots, etc. And I like the sound of Multi-carrier because what that says to me is more resources for freight and in turn, more freight opportunities which I believe in turn would mean getting home faster/easier, but I'm not 100% sure about that? I see a lot of advantages to this, however, I just learned about it and can hardly even pretend to understand it. In the first place, it confuses me because right now because I'm driving for panther. I'm like a dedicated sub-contractor for them. My strait truck has their logo on it, I deal only with them and my owner, and that's the only way I understand it. So the multi-carrier thing confuses me the most from that aspect. Could someone provide a simple explanation, and maybe some links to more resources where I could learn more about this?
My second question is about Freight volume. If going with only one Expedite carrier, then would any one of them have a clear advantage of more freight opportunities over another? And would this heavily depend on the area, or could it be summed up as "insert carrier here" has more freight overall than the others?
Third question is possibly the least important, but also depends on what kind of answers I get to it What expedite carriers, if any, would allow owners to sell advertising space on their truck/van assuming the advertisement did not conflict with their services? This was one of the first questions I asked when I was in orientation with Panther, because every other important question was being answered in the orientation. I was irritated to find out the answer was no, and so I'm not interested in staying with Panther if there are other carriers out there that would allow this (assuming their freight volume and pay is comparable)
Thank you very much for your time!
While browsing these forums, I found an interesting thread labeled Multi-carrier thread under the Carrier forums. This raised and eyebrow and definitely peaked my interest. As it stands, what little I know about Expedite trucking is as such:
Expedite company: Handles the logistics, setting up loads/negotiating rates with the customer, dispatching to drivers, puts their company log on the truck/van, installs qualcomm units (if they utilize this technology) and assigns truck numbers to the owners truck/van.
Owner: Owns the truck, pays for all maintenance and repairs/truck payments, as well as any fees/insurance that will be required, and pays the driver. (unless of course the owner is the driver as well, in which case they pay themselves )
Driver: Sub-contracted by the owner and pays for fuel (I do understand this, not to mention other details, vary depending on the owner) and deals directly with the expedite company for dispatching, negotiations and getting home.
I'm sure I left some stuff out, but that's how I understand it in a nutshell, and so you might see how being a Multi-Carrier driver confuses me. I very much like the idea of a Multi-carrier driver for many reasons; apparently it's only allowed with cargo vans and that means better fuel mileage and less restrictions/no HoS regulation (from my understanding) not having to go into weigh stations (this might vary?) fitting in more parking lots, etc. And I like the sound of Multi-carrier because what that says to me is more resources for freight and in turn, more freight opportunities which I believe in turn would mean getting home faster/easier, but I'm not 100% sure about that? I see a lot of advantages to this, however, I just learned about it and can hardly even pretend to understand it. In the first place, it confuses me because right now because I'm driving for panther. I'm like a dedicated sub-contractor for them. My strait truck has their logo on it, I deal only with them and my owner, and that's the only way I understand it. So the multi-carrier thing confuses me the most from that aspect. Could someone provide a simple explanation, and maybe some links to more resources where I could learn more about this?
My second question is about Freight volume. If going with only one Expedite carrier, then would any one of them have a clear advantage of more freight opportunities over another? And would this heavily depend on the area, or could it be summed up as "insert carrier here" has more freight overall than the others?
Third question is possibly the least important, but also depends on what kind of answers I get to it What expedite carriers, if any, would allow owners to sell advertising space on their truck/van assuming the advertisement did not conflict with their services? This was one of the first questions I asked when I was in orientation with Panther, because every other important question was being answered in the orientation. I was irritated to find out the answer was no, and so I'm not interested in staying with Panther if there are other carriers out there that would allow this (assuming their freight volume and pay is comparable)
Thank you very much for your time!